The Lee Readers

gave him the first fixed income he had had since his marriage.

With much labor and care as well as critical taste and genuine love of the authors, he edited for young people "The Boys' Froissart," "The Boys' King Arthur," "The Boys' Mabinogion," and "The Boys' Percy."

He had a high regard for the power of good literature and desired to place it before the young. He said, in the introduction to "The Boys' Percy," written a few weeks before his death: "He who walks in the way these following ballads point will be manful in necessary fight, fair in trade, loyal in love, generous to the poor, tender in the household, prudent in living, plain in speech, merry upon occasion, simple in behavior, and honest in all things. In this trust and this knowledge I now commend my young countrymen to The Boys' Percy.'"

The winter of 1880 brought a hand-to-hand fight with death, in which he so far came off victor as to be able in the spring of 1881 to deliver twelve of twenty intended lectures on the English novel. Some of his finest poems were planned and written about this time. When so ill that he was unable to lift food to his mouth, he penciled his noble poem, "Sunrise," one of a projected series of Hymns of the Marshes."

In his brave, hopeless fight for life and strength to work, he went in the summer to the mountains of North Carolina. He grew gradually worse, and in September, 1881, ended a life ideal in serenity and purity, heroic in courage and endurance.

The appreciation of Lanier's work as a poet is growing

steadily. Its very originality and strength delayed this appreciation. But he is coming more and more to be recognized as one of the truest, sweetest, and most original of our American poets. Living in a world of sweet sounds, he was a master of musical effect in words. This gift is combined with original thought, exuberant fancy, imaginative power, and rare nobility of theme and treat

ment.

"His song was only living aloud,
His work, a singing with his hand.”

"Music is love in search of a word." LANIER

I am one with all the kinsmen things
That e'er my Father fathered." - Ibid.

"When life's all love, 'tis life; aught else, 'tis naught."

"Lo, in the East!

Will the East unveil ?

- Ibid.

The East is unveiled, the East hath confessed

A flush: 'tis dead; 'tis alive: 'tis dead, ere the West Was aware of it: nay, 'tis abiding, 'tis unwithdrawn : Have a care, sweet Heaven! 'Tis Dawn.

Now a dream of a flame through that dream of a flush is uprolled :

To the zenith ascending, a dome of undazzling gold
Is builded, in shape as a beehive, from out of the sea;
The hive is of gold undazzling, but oh, the Bee,

The star-fed Bee, the build-fire Bee,

Of dazzling gold is the great Sun-bee

That shall flash from the hive-hole over the sea.” — Ibid.

THE BLUE AND THE GRAY

BY FRANCIS MILES FINCH

Mr. Finch is an American poet and lawyer. He was born in New York in 1827. He has written some short poems, of which the best known are "Nathan Hale," and this poem.

By the flow of the inland river,

Whence the fleets of iron have fled,

Where the blades of the grave grass quiver,

Asleep are the ranks of the dead:

Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the judgment day,

Under the one the Blue,

Under the other the Gray.

These in the robings of glory,
Those in the gloom of defeat,
All with the battle-blood gory,
In the dusk of eternity meet :-
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;

Under the laurel the Blue,

Under the willow the Gray.

From the silence of sorrowful hours

The desolate mourners go,

Lovingly laden with flowers,

Alike for the friend and the foe

Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day
Under the roses the Blue,

Under the lilies the Gray.

So with an equal splendor,
The morning sunrays fall,
With a touch impartially tender,
On the blossoms blooming for all:-
Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the judgment day;
Broidered with gold the Blue,
Mellowed with gold the Gray.

So, when the summer calleth
On forest and field of grain,
With an equal murmur falleth
The cooling drip of the rain :
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day ;
Wet with the rain the Blue,

Wet with the rain the Gray.

Sadly, but not with upbraiding,
The generous deed was done;
In the storm of the years that are fading
No braver battle was won :-

Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day ;
Under the blossoms the Blue,
Under the garlands the Gray.

No more shall the war cry sever,

Or the winding rivers be red;
They banish our anger forever

When they laurel the graves of our dead:
Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the judgment day;

Love and tears for the Blue,
Tears and love for the Gray.

THE FLIGHT ACROSS THE LAKE

BY JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

He was

Cooper was the first American novelist of note. born in New Jersey in 1789 and died in 1851. He wrote chiefly sea stories, and novels about Indian and pioneer life. He is most widely known by the Leather-Stocking series, which includes "The Deerslayer," "The Last of the Mohicans," "The Pathfinder," ," "The Pioneers," and "The Prairie."

This selection is from "The Last of the Mohicans," which is considered Cooper's masterpiece. The scene is laid in New York during the Seven Years' War between the French and the English. It describes Colonel Munro's journey, with Major Heyward, Hawkeye, and the two Indians, Chingachgook and Uncas, in search of his daughters, who had been treacherously captured by the Indians.

Libros

The Lee Readers: First-[fifth] book, Libro 5